At first glance, HoYoverse’s Honkai: Nexus Anima looks like Pokémon. It has characters who are effectively trainers, cute creatures with some having “inspiration on their sleeves” designs, and its battle system for individual creatures makes it feel like it’s embracing the pet and monster battles before it. But Honkai: Nexus Anima is actually weirder than its counterparts, and that makes it something to hold onto.
Half creature-collecting game, half strategy game, and an autobattler, Honkai: Nexus Anima was a surprise for me. While I haven’t played the Honkai series, the progression to the creature-collecting genre seemed like a wild swing for the Singaporean company. But with Petit Planet set to launch earlier this year, expanding the publisher and developer’s genres from gacha to include cozy games, this swing makes more sense.
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That said, like Petit Planet, the similarities between Honkai: Nexus Anima and other games are hard to deny, but its execution keeps it unique. During Gamescom 2026 in Cologne, Germany, we got the chance to go hands-on with the game after its multi-platform Evolution Test. In our coverage of that test, we called out the creature variety but, more importantly, how well the autobattling gameplay features stick out.
HoYoverse is getting into the creature-collecting genre with Honkai: Nexus Anima.
In Honkai: Nexus Anima, players are dropped into a town where humans and Anima share a life that is shaped by their connections to each other. With a vibrant color palette and a push to replicate a real town instead of anything too genre-specific, the game’s design sticks out.
The bonds between humans and Anima are called the Nexus, defined in the game as the unseen bonds that link paired Aspects like Love, Hate, Light, Dark, Reality, and Illusion together (yes, these are your creature types). In the game’s lore, an event known as the Sundering caused the fundamental bonds to shatter and create the Anima that you encounter in the world. See creature types.
As a plane-hopping traveler who has escaped captivity, players forge new bonds with new Anima and work to harness their Aspects to win Nexus Battles, clear challenges, explore the world, and even make money. The complexity of what you can do with your Anima is interesting.
While Honkai: Nexus Anima’s core gameplay revolves around battling and raising your ranking, the game also pushes players to explore and collect as many Anima as possible. A bit spoiled, those checking out the Gamescom demo in the B2B area were able to see just about every Anima currently in the game. And let me tell you, some of them are hard to describe.
Some of the Anima in this HoYoverse title feel a little too similar to other IP, but by and large the unique designs exist to trigger your cute aggression.
Some of the Anima in Honkai: Nexus Anima resemble legendary Pokémon counterparts; that’s a given, as do some of the stage one Anima as well. There is even one that is just My Little Pony. That said, the game also features truly weird and ridiculous designs that are just fun to throw into battle.
Whether it’s different food-based creatures like a Mexican-themed avocado I liked way too much, the different varieties of chunky dog-like Anima, or any number of odd Anima including axolotls and pangolins, the wide range of visual designs is fun to see, and even more fun to play with.
In terms of play, the design of the town, Iia, that we got to explore in the Gamescom Honkai: Nexus Anima demo was straightforward. Though quite a bit of my 60 minutes of playtime was dedicated to trying to get up to speed on the game’s lore. Like the fact that Iia is in the Reality Plane, or trying to figure out how the people I kept battling had wildly different badge numbers (rankings?) despite having the same level of Anima.
But much like my uncertainty around what the badge number items I was collecting were, ranking or otherwise, the different language for the game made me feel like I needed a glossary. With a different term for just about everything, figuring everything out can be overwhelming for players who haven’t played Honkai: Star Rail, where I assume much of the core lore concepts come from.
The lore in Honkai: Nexus Anima is overwhelming, but the gameplay is still fantastic.
That said, at a certain point, I just gave up on trying to figure it all out and instead decided to just vibe my way through the rest of the demo. With mounted traversal available, using your Anima, of course, exploration is easy. Once I found the Nexus Hall, a dueling spot for different factions, I just didn’t stop battling until one of the demoists let me know that time was up.
Exploring the hall, I entered conversations without really understanding what to do. At first, I just selected to battle as soon as possible, and they accepted. But as the levels got higher, I found out that being too pushy while trying to battle could ice you out of the conversation entirely. While some of the Anima designs are just plain weird, so are some of the personalities for the NPCs that you can talk to.
Whether it’s Mr. No, narcissistic but very insecure rich boys, or characters who just talk in third person, their temperament matters. There is no shortage of humor in the Honkai: Nexus Anima’s dialogue, and that helps keep each conversation fresh even when they sometimes devolve from quirky and weird to just plain nonsensical. A game-changer in my Honkai: Nexus Anima demo was realizing that conversation prompts and responses vary by character; you can go back to the character and try again.
While I can assume some of the requirements for battle declarations and acceptance exist, there was no real way to figure them out for individual characters. While this can inspire more exploration, it can also spark small bits of frustration if you just can’t figure it out.
Honkai: Nexus Anima’s approach to dialogue is interesting, and the characters range from straight-up weird to actually endearing.
Still, the battle segments of the game are absolutely fun. An auto-battler at heart, you set your Anima (taking into account their level and Aspect type), and then hit go. The battle from there on out can be influenced by calling on specific buffs through the cards at the bottom of the screen with Honkai characters on them.
While I didn’t dig into it much, instead forgoing conversations for as many quick Anima battles as possible, the battles you win help shape the narrative. As you work your way through factions, you’ll be able to discover your buried past and maybe figure out why you’re psychic (because I definitely don’t know).
Beyond progressing the narrative, battling with your Anima will also level them up and help them transform. Their growth exemplifies your bond with each of your Anima, and you’re rewarded with stronger Anima to battle with. Additionally, bonding with an Anima doesn’t stop at battling.
Players are also able to give their creatures custom names and take pictures with them when equipped. However, a great addition would be a way for players to keep their Anima in a specific transformation simply because they love it. Additionally, Chromatic Anima serve as Honkai: Nexus Anima’s version of shinies, and can help push players looking to turn this creature-collector hybrid title into a true collection-focused game.
There is so much to do in Honkai: Nexus Anima, for better and sometimes worse.
But while you can battle with your Anima, you can also put them to work in shops to help gain currency throughout your time playing. It’s like, well, giving them jobs. Unfortunately, like Petit Planet, we still don’t know the game’s full monetization scheme, and that remains a thorn in most American players’ sides.
With microtransactions becoming more frequent, though still less common than in traditional mobile gaming markets, releasing the monetization structure sooner rather than later for its new titles will help HoYoverse set expectations for its titles.
While we can look to Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero for some examples, the traditional gacha structure doesn’t map entirely onto creature-collectors, cozy games, or the newly announced co-op adventure game, Nodusfall, that the publisher announced at Gamescom Opening Night Live.
As HoYoverse diversifies its line-up, one can only hope that the layers of systems and ideas get more focused and edited down. With so much going on in Honkai: Nexus Anima, it was too easy to be overwhelmed. But when the game’s gameplay gets the spotlight beyond its glossary of new terms or the different ways to use or earn currency, it’s easy to get sucked into the loop and not want to leave.
The autobattler gameplay in Honkai: Nexus Anima is the star of the game, and easy to get sucked into.
The autobattling is beyond easy to get into, and even with nearly every Anima unlocked and levels higher than most of the characters I met in the Nexus Hall, I still found ways to make my battles more challenging by just vibing.
I found as many little weird guys to put on my line-up at any given time and just sent them. It was fun to build favorites that I didn’t really want to trade out, even for an easier win, and the depth of the different Anima powers started to shine too.
Honkai: Nexus Anima is surprisingly catchy, with gameplay that is hard to put down and easy to master. At the same time, the game’s size will be either its biggest strength or a flaw, depending on the player. For me, though, my cute aggression was activated, and I wrote down just about every adorable Anima I could find so that by the time the next playtest comes around, I know exactly which ones I am trying to collect.
The adorable factor that seems to always just straddle creative and absolutely weird (there is an Anima that is just a bowl of ramen) is doing a lot to make Honkai: Nexus Anima something I am highly anticipating. And as a mobile title, it’s easy to see how much battery I’ll end up burning through trying to capture every Anima that makes me smile.
Honkai: Nexus Anima does not currently have a release date. It conducted its first public test in August of 2026 and will launch on PC and mobile (Android and iOS).
Disclosure: HoYoverse provided travel and accommodation to Gamescom to demo their titles.
